Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, a semiconductor wafer fragment is indicated generally at 10 and comprises a semiconductive substrate 12. In the context of this document, the term “semiconductive substrate” is defined to mean any construction comprising semiconductive material, including, but not limited to, bulk semiconductive materials such as a semiconductive wafer (either alone or in assemblies comprising other materials thereon), and semiconductive material layers (either alone or in assemblies comprising other materials). The term “substrate” refers to any supporting structure, including, but not limited to, the semiconductive substrates described above. Substrate 12 comprises a field oxide region 13 having an outer surface 14 (FIG. 2) over which a plurality of conductive runners or conductive lines 16, 18, and 20 are formed. The illustrated conductive lines or runners include conductive portions and insulative portions. Exemplary conductive portions are constituted, in this example, by a respective polysilicon layer 22 and an overlying silicide layer 24. The insulative portions of the runners or lines are constituted by respective overlying caps 26 and associated sidewall spacers 28. Exemplary materials for the insulative portions include oxides and nitrides.
An insulative layer 30 such as borophosphosilicate glass is formed over runners 16, 18, and 20 and a contact opening 32 is formed through a masked etch of layer 30 to outwardly expose a portion of silicide layer 24. Thereafter, conductive material such as conductively doped polysilicon is formed within contact opening 32 to provide a conductive contact 34 to conductive line 18. A metal layer 36 is provided thereover to form an electrical connection with conductive line 18.
A typical practice within the semiconductor industry is to provide a conductive line or runner with a widened landing pad in order to accommodate mask misalignments when contact openings are formed. An exemplary widened landing pad is shown in FIG. 1 at 38 and FIG. 2 by area A. By having a widened landing pad, contact opening 32 can shift left or right some distance relative to the position shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 without making undesirable contact with the substrate. For purposes of the ongoing discussion, landing pad 38 includes the conductive and insulative portions of conductive line 18; and the conductive portions of conductive line 18 define a contact pad with which electrical communication is desired. Accordingly, in the illustrated example a contact pad is defined by polysilicon layer 22 and suicide layer 24 of conductive line 18. The contact pad defines a target area A inside of which it is desirable to form a contact opening. An electrical connection through contact opening 32 can be formed anywhere within target area A and still effectively make a desirable connection with the conductive contact pad. Hence, the target area tolerates a contact opening mask misalignment on either side of the illustrated and desired contact opening 32. A tradeoff for improved mask misalignment tolerance is a reduction in wafer real estate available for supporting conductive lines and other integrated circuitry components. This is due largely in part to the increased area which is occupied by the widened landing pad 38. This also adversely impacts the conductive line spacing such that desired minimum spacing adjacent conductive lines is not achieved. Hence, integrated circuitry cannot be packed as densely upon a wafer as is desirable when the widened landing pads are used.
This invention grew out of concerns associated with enhancing the efficiency with which wafer real estate is used to support integrated circuitry. This invention also grew out of concerns associated with improving the methods and structures through which contact is made relative to conductive lines.